


Chomping At The Bit

by koanju (verstehen)



Category: Pitch Black - Fandom
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2004, recipient:Sandrine Shaw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:20:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verstehen/pseuds/koanju
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riddick and Johns have a past. But they ain't got much of a future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chomping At The Bit

One of these days, Johns and I were gonna have to rearrange the terms of our little deal. I was getting tired of chomping at the bit in my mouth as he hauled me back to whatever shithole he thought he could get the biggest payoff from.

Butcher Bay'd been the last. Good waffles. Shitty security in all three levels. The other convicts weren't much to write home about either.

At least the Menthols I'd got paid hadn't been bad. Then there'd been the riot. That'd been a sweet bit of action.

And Johns chased me. That'd been the fun part. Especially since he was slowing down now, after our trick on Hubble Bay. He'd upped the ante by bringing the gauge along and using it. So I paid back the favor by leaving a piece of a knife in his spine.

I really fucking hated getting shot at.

When he'd got over that, got fixed up so the nerves in his spine worked again (and that wasn't a cheap deal, now was it?) Johns had come out with two more addictions to add to his list of sins.

One was me. Chasing me, which he knew I knew and I knew he didn't care I knew. The other was morphine, which he didn't think I was aware of, but then, that was part of his problem with awareness.

It was fucking him up. Making him a serious liability.

I didn't think my split of the bounty was going to be worth it anymore. If I even got it. Johns might have been an ass before the morphine but at least he paid up.

What he'd do now that he had a hard-on for me and the drugs? That was anyone's guess. Well, not anyone's guess. Mine. And my guess was that he wasn't gonna be so reliable anymore, however predictable he stayed. I was usually right about guessing.

It'd made me a good ranger and a better killer, being good at people. The whole key to that was that people were easy when you realized they were just animals denying what they were.

Animals. And Johns had gone and lamed himself up. That got you killed in the wild.

"What are you looking at?" Johns asked, walking over to where he'd stashed me in the cargo bay. He had a black blindfold in his hands.

Cute. Matched the bit I already had in my mouth. The cuffs were metal, with cross-mesh, closed links that formed a bar between them. Top of the line shit. Johns wasn't taking any chances. Another reason for me to think that he was done with our deal.

I smiled at him around the bit, letting him know this didn't bother me, just to see him lose it.

He dropped the blindfold on my leg and grinned. "You think that's funny, Riddick?"

I shrugged my shoulders and leaned back, feeling the hard wall behind me.

I was sitting on a crate, though I couldn't tell what was in it. It smelt alive and there was a sweet, almost acidic smell coming from somewhere, so I was pretty sure it wasn't anything mechanical. The cargo looked pretty normal, really, except for a thing here or there. The sort of things you saw when it was a passenger ship taking the long way, the back roads.

Johns didn't trust me on the popular shipping lanes anymore. It was kinda sweet.

His smile dropped. "Gonna be a long trip, Riddick."

I shrugged again, looking him up and down. He always kept my goggles close. Sometimes on him. Sometimes in the cargo. I liked knowing where.

"Piss me off and I'll shoot you."

Empty threat, Johns. Must be getting shaky.

He wouldn't waste the payday. Had to keep feeding that nasty morphine habit somehow. So, I shrugged again, leaning my head back against the wall where I could feel the cool metal right below the crown of my head.

I was comfortable. He was getting twitchy. Sloppy, Johns. Not gonna last much longer, are you?

I glanced over at the case he had with him, where I knew he was keeping his addiction, and then slowly slid my eyes over to his face.

His lips twitched when he realized what I was looking at and he pulled out his flashlight. "A little dark in here."

Oh, now that wasn't sporting!

I slid my eyes shut and dropped my head to the side as the flashlight was flipped on and shined at me. Fucker thought he could get to me like that, but I'd got used to light with these eyes already.

"Looks like we're not going to be only ones on this trip. Few others paying for their passage." I felt the light move off my face.

Wasn't quite stupid enough to move back to look at him quite yet though, not until I heard the flashlight slide against fabric and the click of his pocket being buttoned up again. Then I looked back slow and went to how I'd been sitting.

Others. I'd heard others outside these walls. It was a risk, bringing me on a passenger ship, especially as there wasn't a cryopod in this cargo hold. That meant he had to walk me out to the other room, with all the people.

I glanced down at the blindfold on my thigh.

"You'll just have to trust me, Riddick," Johns said.

I'd just have to trust his greed anyway.

He reached up and undid the bit, jerking it out of my mouth, the rough wood running over my tongue. "Last chance to say something, Riddick. I'm thinking Butcher Bay was too easy."

This little game was always fun.

Johns liked to tempt himself, to make it so he had an excuse and then not take it. He knew that whatever I said he wasn't gonna like and he took the bit out -- last time it'd been a ball gag; I liked the bit better -- anyway.

I swallowed and licked my lips, my throat already sore from not enough chance to swallow, and said, "If you go back on our deal, Johns, it's over. I got no reason to keep you alive."

He laughed at me, chuckled that good old boy chuckle, and leaned in. "You aren't getting out this time, Riddick. Butcher Bay'll look like heaven in comparison to where I'm taking you."

Vodnik Hold. Shit.

We weren't playing around anymore. The third in a triad of triple-max prisons that'd survived the 'not in our backyard mentality,' Vodnik Hold was as wet and cold as Crematoria was sulfuric and hot. Submerged hundreds of feet under water, the only way, it was said, to get out was to die; the second you escaped the water pressure that far down would burst your skull.

It didn't help that I didn't like large bodies of water.

Johns grinned, wide and cocky. "Yeah, boy. Sound nice, don't it?"

I swallowed again and tested my bonds. When we got to where we were going one of us was gonna be dead and I didn't plan on it being me. I shrugged though, not letting it show that it shook me, and said, "You know what I hate about you the most, Johns?"

"The fact that," he leaned close to my face. "I'm better than you, Riddick?"

I ignored him like he hadn't even spoke, like he was so insignificant to me that I didn't even hear what he was saying, and continued. "It ain't that you're a merc, though I can't say I respect it as a career choice because everyone knows that mercs are just fuckers too slow and stupid to be real killers, all rejects from strike forces that recognized what sorry asses you really were.

"But it isn't that. What I hate most about you, what disgusts me the most, is that you ain't got it in you to be anything better than a small-time, drug-sex-thrill addicted two-bit merc with a bug up your ass because your daddy didn't love you enough. How's it feel to be _that_ pathetic, Johns?"

Johns. So fucking predictable. He punched me, making my head smack back against the wall. I chuckled. "You'll like Vodnik, Riddick. Ever been there?" He smiled and punched me again. "I have. They don't even bother with guards under the water. Only two outta every ten prisoners even makes it down the shoot without his head exploding. And the best part of it? I keep the cash. Maybe they aren't paying what Butcher Bay would. But I'll live." He forced my mouth open, ready to shove the bit back in.

I tasted blood from my lip and the sweat on his fingers and thought about taking a bite outta him right here, but then he'd scream and send the others running and civilians, well, they might panic and shoot me.

I hated getting shot at.

Johns snapped the bit in, securing it tight enough that if it'd gone in any farther, I would've started to choke. And I didn't have much of a gag reflex left anymore.

"Head forward." The good old boy drawl was gone. Now he was being short with me.

I didn't move fast enough and he reached for his billy club and extended it. Looking for the excuse now and low on self-control. Well, I could play that game. I moved a little faster, let him think I was still shaken about the slam I was never gonna end up in.

He smirked. "There's a good boy." Then he rammed the billyclub right into my stomach.

I was gonna bleed him out for that.

I bent forward, over my stomach, and let the urge to choke, which'd make me gag, pass while he secured the blindfold around me.

"We're going to take a nice walk to the cryopod I've got set up for you, Riddick. You try anything and I will shoot you. I still get a bounty even if you're dead."

Not as much. Couldn't put convicts on the books if they were dead when they got there.

Johns pulled me up by the back of the bit, making it dig into the corners of my mouth, and then shoved me against the wall when I was up. "Turn around, boy. One more search." He hit a button that undid the restraints around my ankles that'd been securing me to the crate.

I'd been tied to the fucking crate; where did he think I was gonna get a weapon from?

He patted my chest and then kicked my legs as far apart as they'd go, pushing me over the crate. "Don't move." His hands slid down over my thighs and legs.

I put my bound wrists out in front of me so that I was balancing on my elbows and stayed down as his hands got a little too friendly. I heard voices coming closer. Probably the others dropping off more cargo.

But it was enough to make Johns back off. "Stand up, boy."

So predictable. I shrugged my shoulders back as I stood and stretched a little before Johns shoved me forward. Knew he would have preferred my hands behind my back but that wasn't how cryopods fit. He started marching me out, keeping the billy club in my back. Not at the sweet spot. Lower. Right about where I'd stuck my knife in him.

Now who was chomping at the bit, Johns? It wasn't me. It wasn't gonna be me.

I smelled blood, not mine, and wondered if I was imagining it. It'd be his soon. I smiled to myself. This was over.

 

  
   
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